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<title>Found in Tesco: BLT (Bags, Lines, and Terrorists) by notoneforreality</title>
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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/24629926">Found in Tesco: BLT (Bags, Lines, and Terrorists)</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/notoneforreality/pseuds/notoneforreality'>notoneforreality</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>R&amp;D (Relationships and Dynamics) [3]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>James Bond (Craig movies)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Autistic Character, Bomb threat, Bombs, British Sign Language, Canon-Typical Violence, Established Relationship, Guns, Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy References, M/M, Q (James Bond) is a Holmes, Q is Autistic, Terrorists, Tesco, autistic traits, reference to terror attack, terror attack, why do I keep writing action scenes?</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-06-09</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-06-09</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-04 00:40:22</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,235</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/24629926</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/notoneforreality/pseuds/notoneforreality</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Q would like one day off without having to worry about anyone's safety or national security. James wants a meal deal and the rest of the shoppers want to make it out of this alive.</p><p>In which Q and James can never quite manage to be truly off the clock.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>James Bond/Q</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>R&amp;D (Relationships and Dynamics) [3]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1790158</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>20</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>276</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Found in Tesco: BLT (Bags, Lines, and Terrorists)</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Special thanks to Linorien for help with the title!</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>There are few things Q cannot find it in himself to forgive, but breaking the sanctity of Tesco is one of them.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>They’re only really in there for a meal deal — they’re attempting a tourist date on Q’s only day off in three months, and they’ve just finished a nostalgia inspired tour of the National Gallery  — but James wants to grab some coffee filters, and Q wants chocolate from the sweets aisle. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Just as he chooses a bar of Dairy Milk, however, someone screams. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>The gunshot takes his breath away, makes him flinch back as his heart leaps. For a moment, the world blows out, white and dizzying; he can deal with this at work, but there aren’t supposed to be guns in central London.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Q uses that to get himself moving again: if he’s scared — and he is; there’s a reason he’s not a field agent — then anyone else must be absolutely terrified. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>The chocolate is on the floor, but he doesn’t bother to pick it up. Instead, he creeps to the end of the row and peers out into the main aisle. James’ coffee is on the other side of the shop, but when Q pokes his head out, he can see James doing the same, too.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>James turns around and nods at Q, but Q shakes his head. As long as he has any say in it, there won’t be an open fire fight in a Tesco full of people just trying to do their shopping. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Wait. Go with the men, first,” Q signs, slowly. Even though James is a quick study, he’s only been learning BSL for a few weeks. Q’s hands tremble, but he fights to keep his breathing even and the gesture recognisable. “Keep people safe.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The men find him before they find James, dragging him out to join the clump of people at the tills, guarded by another man with a gun.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>James comes shortly after, and he’s not the last. When Q sees the old woman being hauled and shoved along, he springs up, crying out in a wordless reproach. He makes it across to her in two strides, before anyone can react, and takes her arm, letting her lean on him.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“They’re coming, alright. Just let him help her.” James’ voice is more scottish than usual, and a very distant part of Q’s brain wonders if that’s on purpose or not.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>They must listen to him, whoever’s in charge, because Q’s allowed to all but carry the woman across to join the rest of the shoppers who have been rounded up. There’s about twenty of them in total, including a couple of young boys clinging onto their guardian, and a baby in a pram.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“If they ask, say I’m deaf,” Q tells James, his hands moving as fast as he dares whilst still being comprehensible. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He’s wearing his Bernard watch, and he activates the covert communicator, tapping morse code onto the screen: SOS, Tesco, Trafalgar, guns.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>With the initial noise gone, Q calms down. The man standing guard over the clump of people has a gun, but it’s not raised, and Q isn’t too concerned that anyone in the group is going to do anything to warrant being threatened with the weapon. A man towards the back, bulky arms crossed, glaring, is the most likely candidate, but he doesn’t look reckless enough to try anything. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’ve messaged Six,” Q signs to James. Now the adrenaline is receding, he’s on familiar ground and unimpressed with the situation. He watches the rest of the gunmen huddle further into the store and raises an eyebrow. “Are they setting up a base of operations for a bombing?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Amateurs.” James fingerspells the word. There’s a slight twist of amusement to his mouth, but the set of his shoulders is more irritation. “Want me to talk?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Q narrows his eyes at the gang. Six white males, twenty to thirty years old: one standing guard at the door to the shop, armed, another gunman standing guard over the shoppers, and four unarmed men crowded around two backpacks that they had dumped on the floor next to the vegetables. Each of them is wearing a black jacket, with an unfamiliar signia emblazoned across the back, and they’ve all chosen a buzzcut as their hairstyle of choice.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The police will be on their way already. Trafalgar Square is always busy, and gunshots are always going to cause panic and suspicion.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He nods. If James can keep them talking, keep them distracted, it gives both the Met and Six time to get reinforcements to the scene.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I just wanted coffee for the flat, and now we have to deal with idiots who can’t even commit a terror attack properly,” James mutters, which earns him several looks from the people pressed in around them.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Q rolls his eyes, signing in staccato, “Stop complaining and do your job.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“It’s supposed to be my day off. And I deal with international issues.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>That gets him even more looks, and the looks get the attention of the guard.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Stop complaining,” Q signs, again, “and talk.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“‘Scuse me, lad,” James says to the guard, “But what the hell are you doing?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>At the very least, it throws the guard off his rhythm. He buffers, for a moment and then opens his mouth without saying anything, staring at James. Q squints at him and decides to call him Reg Nullify.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Who the fuck are you?” The man at the door says — Q designates him ‘Max Quordlepleen’ — at the same time one from the huddle shouts not to give anything away.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Name’s Jim, and I’m gonna be late for a meeting. I just wanted a coke in my break.” James pushes forward to the very front of the crowd. Reg shifts the gun in his hands, but James doesn’t react. “I don’t see why you need us here. Either shoot us or let us go.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>A girl in the crowd screams, and the sound breaks at the top, cracking into heaving sobs.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Fucking hell, mate, don’t give them ideas.” The bulky man at the back of the group, the one Q had noticed earlier, fights his way through to stand next to James. He raises his hands in surrender to Reg and glares at James. “Just be quiet and they’ll let us go after.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>James shoves his hands into his pockets and cocks his hips. “I just want to know why I’m stuck in a Tesco when I’m supposed to be at a board meeting.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“If you don’t go back to where you were, I’m going to kill you both,” Reg says, but his voice wavers, and so do his hands as he raises the gun. His form is atrocious; he’s got as much chance of shooting the tills rather than either of the men stood a foot in front of him.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Q’s watch buzzes against his wrist: one short, pause, one long, pause, one short and one long, pause, three long and two short. James glances in his direction, and Q holds out two fingers and a thumb, keeping his hand down by his hip. They need to keep stalling for eight minutes.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Siren sound in the distance. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>At the door, Max swears. “The police are coming.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Or they could deal with the situation now.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The gang panics. Max retreats into the shop to join Reg in brandishing his gun at the hostages, and the huddle around the bomb starts fumbling with it. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Q bites down on his tongue and starts dragging people to the floor, gesturing at others to do the same. The man with James is talking faster, providing an inadvertent distraction as Q works to get everyone down while no one’s looking at them.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>When everyone’s down and out of the line of fire, Q yells, wordless, and it’s all James needs to draw a gun and shove the other man out of the way.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Reg shoots first, the burst of bullets spraying over the tills, and James kicks out and up. The gun flies out of Reg’s hands and clatters onto the floor, close enough for James to backheel it towards where Q is scrambling over everyone.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>There are more people screaming and crying, and the sound rattles in Q’s head but he grits his teeth. He and James have been in worse situations than this.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He runs his hands over the gun. It’s an old SIG 516 that probably used to be a police gun and Q would have no problems using it, but the people behind him are terrified and adding fire isn’t going to help that. James already has a gun, and, for once, he’s trying not to fire it.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Instead, James uses the gun like a blunt weapon, clapping it to Max’s temple at the same time as he snaps his leg out, push kicking Reg backwards. Max drops to the floor and Reg sprawls backwards into the flower display.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>When the rest of the gang charge at James, he’s ready for them.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He grabs the first one by the collar and swings him around, sending him flying through a shelf, pulling his elbow back at the last second to crunch the next assailants nose. Blood sprays, and it’s the first thing that doesn’t bother Q in the slightest. He unclips the magazine from the first SIG and pushes out further to grab and disable Max’s gun, where it’s lying in his limp arms.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The sounds of James fighting over his head are familiar and Q closes his eyes for half a second, pulling on his work persona. He grabs the two guns and throws them at the bulky man, then tosses the magazines at a woman with fierce shoulders in the other direction. He nods at both of them and pushes his hands apart, and hopes that they understand. Keep the guns and the bullets separate. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Once that’s done, he pushes himself to his feet and runs.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He runs down the aisle next to where James is fighting, and at one point has to dodge an avalanche of Heinz cans caused by a body colliding with the other side of the shelves, but he makes it all the way down and catches the end to help pull himself round the corner.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The bombs are unguarded, the men distracted by James, and Q is on them in a heartbeat, eyes running over all the wires and tubes and bad soldering. Almost immediately, adrenaline drops out of his veins. How boring: neither of them even require a knife. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Two sharp tugs are all it takes to disconnect the switch from the explosives, and then Q can tease the blasting caps out, shoving them into his pocket to inspect later. Someone should have paid more attention in DT class.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Q stands and turns to where James is stood in the middle of five unconscious men. The last man tries to push himself to a seat and throw a can of beans, but James just catches it and aims his gun at the man’s head.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“If I were you, I’d pretend to be asleep,” James says in his usual voice. The man stares at him, then lies back down and stares at the ceiling instead.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Well done, Bond.” Q picks his way over the body closest to him, pausing long enough to catch the rise nad fall of the man’s chest. “I’m impressed you managed to keep hold of your gun the entire time without firing it.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>James’s head slants to the side and his shoulders rise a little. “No bullets,” he says.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Q stares. “What?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>James holds the gun out to him and Q takes it, turning it over in his hands. It’s the Beretta James claimed he lost in Portugal two missions ago.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I hadn’t managed to swipe a replacement mag, yet.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’m going to kill you myself,” Q says, just before he notices that the police have arrived. When one of the officers tells him to get down, he sighs and glares at James. “This is your fault.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It takes some explanation to go along with Q’s government issue badge, but the account is helped by the arrival of a joint team from MI6 and MI5. James doesn’t quite scowl at the agents from Five, but Q can see his sullenness in the angle of his hips through the whole pseudo-debrief held with everyone in the shop as the gang is carted away.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Anyway, I think it’s your fault,” James says, when they’ve finally been cleared to go home. “If we’d just gone to Waitrose, we wouldn’t have been involved.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Q scoffs. “For one, if we hadn’t been there, things could have gone a lot worse. For two, I refuse to pay extortion money for posh groceries.”<br/>
</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“It’s hardly extortion,” James protests, but he’s smiling.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“For you, I doubt it is, Mr Family-Seat-in-the-Scottish-Highlands,” Q says, stepping closer to James to avoid bumping into a stranger and not-so-accidentally bumping James instead. “But I have—”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“A mortgage, and two cats to feed.” James is all but laughing outright now. It’s a familiar disagreement, and Q ignores him with a practised ease.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“We’re getting Chinese for dinner,” Q says, “And then we’re ordering a Tesco online shop.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>And then they’ll fall asleep on the couch watching old episodes of Mock the Week again, and it will have been exactly the sort of day they should have expected.</span>
</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>This fic's selection of keep notes:<br/>--This is like the first time Q's taken a day off in three years and only because James bullied him into it and now he has to deal with this bullshit and he is so over it<br/>--NoW yOu'Ve ThRoWn HiM oFf HiS rHyThM<br/>--god I'm so bad at writing action why do I keep writing things that involve action<br/>--the gang members are named after Milliways staff becuase I got tired of finding seventeen different ways to say 'the man at the door' and 'the man standing guard'<br/>--Q was supposed to be unbothered but then autism happened and both I and he panicked so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯<br/>--nostalgia date: National Gallery for the first time they met, Chinese and Mock the Week for the first time James stayed at Q's flat</p></blockquote></div></div>
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